87. The Importance of Leadership Driven Technology Culture in Senior Living [Bonus Episode]

In this special bonus episode of Raising Tech, hosts Amber Bardon and Matt Reiners discuss Amber's recent article featured in McKnight’s Senior Living, "The Importance of Leadership-Driven Technology Culture in Senior Living"

Discover why senior living leaders must spearhead a strong technology culture and how forward-thinking communities can prioritize tech adoption to enhance resident care, streamline operations, and future-proof their services. Amber shares her insights on why a strong technology culture must start at the leadership level and how communities can ensure technology is a priority rather than an afterthought.

🔗 Read Amber's McKnight’s Senior Living article here.

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Transcript

Matt Reiners: [00:00:00] So Amber, I know you just wrote a piece that was in McKnight, senior Living guest blogs titled The Importance of Leadership Driven Technology Culture in Senior Living. In your article you emphasize that quote, "creating a strong tech culture starts with leadership, setting the tone from the top and ensuring that technology is a priority" end quote.

And I'm wondering if you could just give some. Specific [00:01:00] strategies, specific or initiatives that you've seen implemented to foster this culture within senior living communities?  

Amber Bardon: Matt. I absolutely love this topic. I'm really glad that this is the first question you asked me. I think technology is one of those things that. People don't think about until it doesn't work. And to me it's really interesting that is the way that technology is thought of because it is a large expense, it's a lot of time.

It's something that resources have to be dedicated to. And it's interesting to me that I think a lot of leadership positions don't really want to think about it unless they absolutely have to. And I wonder why that is and I think because technology is something that's very complicated, it's difficult to understand.

I think the depth and breadth of what's needed to support technology and to make it work, it's just not well understood. And it's not something that people find generally interesting enough to want to spend a lot of time talking and thinking about it. I think that leadership can sometimes think about [00:02:00] the shiny, innovative components of technology without wanting to dive into the base layers of infrastructure that are needed to support the fancy, shiny things.

And so that's why I think it's really important to start with this question of how does leadership feel about technology and what is the technology culture of the leadership team? I think that it's important to have this on the radar to have an open conversation about it. And to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

Matt Reiners: It's a, it's a great point I think to your, uh, what you said there about like, you know, sometimes people can see that shiny innovation, right? And they think from, they go from A to Z, right? And they just kind of end up at whatever that end is. And you know, a lot of times when we're talking to these tech vendors, like they're kind of positioning it as Z and not really going through all the steps.

 And I know also in the article you mentioned that quote "technology should be a priority, not an afterthought" end quote. And I'm wondering like, to that point, like how should communities balance that integration of new technologies [00:03:00] with the existing workflows and routines of their staff to ensure a smooth transition and adoption?

Amber Bardon: Well, I think you know, kind of going back to my point earlier, I think technology is something that if it's not a priority, it can get out of control very easily. And you know, we have at Parasol Alliance, we've completed over 120 strategic assessments at close to 80 communities. And I will say the number one issue I've seen at every place I've been is business systems sprawl and business systems may not fall under what you think of as this traditional technology bucket, but in fact it actually is. And the amount of pain that this can cause day-to-day to staff when these systems aren't managed or planned or thought of from a strategic perspective is it really can become a huge burden.

So people can spend a lot of time doing manual workarounds, doing processes manually when there's systems for them having to remember a lot of different passwords. There's one organization I did a strategic plan for who said that it took [00:04:00] six months for their staff to learn their IT systems and then they would leave.

And so it was having an actual true impact on the workforce and the ability of these communities to provide services effectively. 

Matt Reiners: I think that's what I've noticed as well, right? Like these business systems, who owns it, who's optimizing it, who's learning it? How are you just getting better at that?

Because I think as an industry, you know, we've got a lot of people who really are great at care and hospitality, but there's this like gap in terms of this like technology lead. I know some groups have that kind of focus, but the majority do not. And it's kind of interesting to see how that can impact the community as they continue to move forward as we, you know, technology becomes no longer a, a nice to have, but more so a need to have. Um, and I wanna bring it back to like this idea of technology culture. You know, I know you've got quite the experience working at communities, helping all these communities with that.

Are there any common challenges that you see these communities face when trying to [00:05:00] cultivate a technology driven culture? And how can leadership effectively address these obstacles? 

Amber Bardon: Well, I think the first challenge is that this isn't something that's even on the radar of a lot of leadership teams. And no one expects to be spending less money on technology. The expected spend on technology and the amount of time spent on technology is only going to increase, and technology is here to stay.

I think that's an obvious statement, but I wanna reiterate that again because it just underscores the importance of paying attention to this. So I see that it can come across in multiple different ways, both from a staff and a resident perspective. So on the resident side, I meet with residents when I'm doing these strategic assessments and they're interested in technology as well.

So there's a wide range of interests, but I hear repeatedly that residents really want to have education on technology. They want to know how technology can help enable them for the things that they want to do, and they're starting to be interested in as well in how technology can help provide healthier aging

and increase longevity. And then on the [00:06:00] staffing side, staff just want ways to do their jobs easier, more effectively, and more automated. And in all the interviews I've done, which is probably thousands and thousands of interviews at this point, I hear that theme over and over, is that staff just want to be able to do their job effectively without duplication and to be able to have the data to make data-driven decisions for their business.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I think the tech appetite for a lot of these residents coming in is, you know, I, I would be surprised if anybody disagreed that it's on the rise. I know with one of our partners, even just a small example, but they issued a survey and

the people that filled it out digitally is about 15%, three years later, that number's up to 45 in terms of people are really starting to embrace that and use that. And, you know, I'm wondering, last question here for you, Amber. Can you provide just an example of how a leadership driven technology culture has positively impacted resident care in operational efficiency in senior living communities?

Amber Bardon: Well, I think the best example is the podcast that we just did with Tiffany Village and Kristen Parsons. And I know I [00:07:00] talk about this all the time, but to me that is the most outstanding example I've ever seen of leadership taking what tech can do for care for residents and showing outcomes to the best possible level.

So I would definitely check out that podcast if you're interested in learning more, but I would say that in general, this is not something that we're seeing a lot of movement on yet, and that's why I encourage leadership to start thinking about it now, because to implement technology throughout your organization effectively, both at a staff and a resident level, is not a quick process.

It's going to be a multi-year plan. You have to be intentional and you have to have a lot of change management when you're rolling out these changes. And so that's why I really encourage leadership to start thinking about this now, to understand where you are on a technology culture spectrum and where do you want to go.

Matt Reiners: Awesome. Well, Amber, thank you for sharing this with the industry. I think my eyes have been made wide open since joining here at Parasol all of this technology and what it can do and really implement. So, uh, [00:08:00] thank you. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, thank you, Matt.